That Said (10 page)

The telephone company had cut down a tree

to erect, in its place, a sort of monument to a tree—

an imported, pitch-stuck pole with its own tin badge and number

linking house to house and voice to voice.

 

That night when we fed the fire, the embers

glowed under the logs the flames systematically ate,

nibbling slowly, deliberately,

from left to right. Like reading.

Sometimes, a fire devours a book all at once

in one sitting; or slowly, disinterestedly, leafs through it,

turning its pages to ash one by one.

 

There's pleasure in watching it ignite

and flare, pleasure that does not want to stop—

in looking around the room

and throwing in anything that will burn.

A paper napkin thrills the flame,

but briefly; a chair causes greater excitement—

its rush seat a catherine wheel sputtering, shooting sparks.

            And punching a hole in plaster

and snapping the laths ribbing the walls;

and peeling shingles from the gray

bird wings of the roof

until the whole house burns with pleasure.

Then the fire died down. We closed the book.

A few of the ashes' soft feathers

drifted lazily up the chimney shaft

into the vanished daylight.

Two hairs plucked from the chest of a baby squirrel—

the brush of the miniaturist freezes an entire population.

Within each quarter inch,

a dozen flowers puncture the spongy ground,

and even the holes where tent poles stuck

bear ornamental weeds.

Upon a wooden balance beam—this painting's equator—

a cat is prancing.

Other animals are eating or being milked:

three spotted goats, a suede camel,

half a donkey's face lost in an embroidered feedbag.

Under a canopy, seven elders in pajamas radiate

like spokes around a bridegroom;

white beards frost the elders' chins.

Outside, a fat iron cauldron squats upon a fire

whose flames spike up golden minarets.

A kneeling boy pours coffee;

his pitcher handle, the size of a human eyelash,

is larger than the bridegroom's mustache.

A wedding! Is the bride asleep somewhere?

The bride's attendants hover in tiers

like angels in heaven's scaffolding,

but heaven, here, is the hanging gardens,

or maybe tent poles are holding heaven up.

Lappets of a tent fold back

on a woman holding her soft triangular breast

to an infant's mouth. The rug she sits on

flaps straight up behind her, like wallpaper.

One-sixteenth of an inch away,

a ram is tethered to the picture frame,

but where's the bride going to fit?

In the left-hand corner of the painting,

across what little of the sky remains,

two geese fly in tandem, pulling two wheels,

two mechanical knotted clouds.

Maybe they are pulling a storm behind them.

Crouched, swirling above the human event,

if the storm fits, it could ruin everything—

smash up the whole abbreviated acre,

flush the bride from sleep—

while the bridegroom sweeps it all away

and enters her innocent tent like thunder,

shattering the distance he's had to keep.

The little hand was on the eight.

It scoured Cinderella's face, radiant

since her apotheosis; blue dress,

blonde pageboy curled like icing on a cake.

The wristwatch came packed in a glass slipper—

really plastic, but it looked like glass—

like one of my mother's shoes, but smaller.

High transparent heel, clear shank and sole,

it looked just big enough to fit me.

 

I stuffed my left foot halfway in,

as far as it would go.

But when I limped across the bedroom rug,

the slipper cut its outline

into my swelling heel.

No matter which foot I tried,

I couldn't fit the ideal

that marks the wearer's virtue,

so I went about my business

of being good. If I was good enough,

in time the shoe might fit.

I cleaned my room, then polished

the forepaws of the Georgian chair;

while in the kitchen, squirming in her highchair,

a bald and wizened empress on her throne,

my baby sister howled one red vowel

over and over.

 

Beside the white mulch of their chenille bedspread,

my parents' Baby Ben wind-up alarm

was three minutes off.

Each night, its moon face,

a luminous and mortuary green,

guided me between my parents' sleeping forms

where I slept

until the mechanism of my sister's hunger,

accurate as quartz,

woke my mother and me moments before

the alarm clock sprang my father to the sink

and out the door.

 

Seven forty-five. His orange Mercury

cut a wake of gravel in the driveway.

Like a Chinese bride I hobbled after him,

nursing my sore foot in a cotton sock.

Cinderella's oldest sister lopped off

her own big toe with a kitchen knife

to make the slipper fit, and her middle sister

sliced her heel down to size.

The dumbstruck Prince failed to notice,

while ferrying to the palace

each false fiancée,

the blood filling the glass slipper.

The shoehorn's silver tongue

consoled each one in turn,

“When
you
are Queen, you won't
need
to walk.”

After Rilke's “Some Reflections on Dolls”

 

On wire hangers, on iron shoulders,

the dresses float in limbo,

 

flat-chested spinsters who will

not dance. It is night,

 

the hands of the clock circle

their twelve black mountains,

 

upstairs the children are dreaming,

and over his red and black inks

 

the father figures the books,

the store as dark

 

as the inside of the safe.

Blouses like airy armor, trousers

 

that marched off the cutting table

through the needle's eye.

 

Dresses, it is your nature

to be possessed. With feverish hands,

 

your jailer will free you, undo

the two pearl buttons on your cuff

 

while her lover hitches up your skirt,

his rough wool against your silk . . .

 

eventually those caresses will wear

you away. One day you will be

 

the crushed body in the ragbag,

the purple in the pauper's closet,

 

the hand-me-down passed from one sister

to another in a distant state.

 

Your pockets will fill with her

perfume, ticket stubs, loose tobacco,

 

the telegram that changes everything

the moment it is read, and memory

 

makes you too painful to wear.

Houndstooth, black-watch plaid,

 

mauve, teal, hunter green; shades

flaring and dying with the seasons—

 

but not for the mannequins heaped

in the cellar under the store.

 

Rashes of plaster dust cover

the gash where the wrist screws

 

into the arm; modestly dusting,

like talcum, the chipped torsos,

 

bald heads, bald crotches,

and around each beautiful eye

 

the corona of ten spiked lashes.

In the morning, the older daughter

 

descends the fourteen stairs

to the store and tries on

 

the frothy, white organza strapless,

dragging its hem like a tide

 

across the fitting room floor.

And there you are in the mirror,

 

up to your old tricks.

She'll curtsy for her adoring father,

 

while her mother—

mouth bristling with straight pins—

 

kneels at her feet. The cash register

resumes its noisy music, browsers

 

breeze in and out of the swinging

door. Sooner or later, each of you

 

will attract your customer.

Not on your own volition will you

 

enter the blazing street and pass

the sister whose smooth back

 

you pressed against so long ago.

Not on your own volition

 

will you dance at a daughter's wedding,

dance unwearyingly until dawn

 

with energies not your own.

Nor for beauty's sake alone will you

 

be chosen from among all the others,

when, in severe folds, you will outwear

 

the body that entered your body willingly

once, and lost herself there.

For Elizabeth Bishop